It’s a strange feeling, re-acclimating to a different culture, a different way of life. It’s all of the little things that take some getting used to: remembering not to drink tap water or flush toilet paper, having to air-dry your clothes, not having air-conditioning, showering directly on the bathroom floor, limited and restricted access to the internet. Of course, these ‘little’ things seem much bigger and more important when we’re forced to live without those luxuries, which we tend to take for granted.
I flew out of Philadelphia about two weeks ago to Washington D.C., then directly to Beijing. It wasn’t a particularly strenuous flight—the 14 hours—but it certainly could have gone faster. The flight from the East Coast to Beijing heads north, almost directly over the North Pole. I took some cool photos over the Arctic Ocean just past the North Pole and again approaching the northern coast of Siberia. It seems odd to seemingly so simply view such remote places, but ever the more amazing.
On the plane, we were instructed to fill out a health form along with the usual customs entry form. Then, upon landing in Beijing, we were told to remain in our seats; that health inspectors were going to board the plane and take everyone’s temperature before allowing anyone to deplane—overreaction to H1N1. A team of 5 or 6 Chinese inspectors, men and women, boarded the plane wearing lab coats, masks, and goggles, and proceeded to quickly take everyone’s temperature by pointing infrared guns at our foreheads. I really wanted to take a photo, but didn’t want to attract any unneeded attention, so refrained. The whole process only took about 10 minutes, and then we were allowed to leave, entering the airport through a maze of checkpoints armed with infrared cameras looking for any swine flu-indicating elevations.
I had forgotten about the pollution. In the taxi on the way into the city, the Beijing haze was more than noticeable, showing only the closest of buildings. I settled into my hostel and went out for a walk, not really sure what to do with myself for my three days in Beijing. I didn’t much feel like being a tourist, and some of the friends who I’d expected to be there weren’t. So, I just walked. I think I probably walked a good 20 miles during my three days in Beijing. Just walking, and exploring.
The second day, I visited IES out in Haidian. I said hello to the teachers and staff, had some reminiscent looks around, bought some Y5 bootleg DVDs from the same old DVD guy, noticed that the phone card lady had a new hat, and then went back to my hostel. I’m not sure what I had expected to do in Beijing for three days, but I felt a bit displaced being back with nothing to do and living out of two very large suitcases. Still, it was somewhat nice to be back, and I had a very nice dinner with a friend, and met another friend for a stroll around a new shopping center out in Chaoyang.
The fourth day, I woke up early and hopped a cab back to the airport for my flight to Harbin. They hit me with a nice fee for my “overweight” bags, since the flight was domestic and the weight limits were lower. In Harbin, I took a taxi to the hotel that the CET program was putting us up in—the Harbin Institute of Technology (GongDa, for short), where I’ll be studying till the end of October, said that we had to be quarantined for 5 days before entering any buildings on campus, including the dorms. I checked-in and called the residential director, who informed me that the other 4 students in my program wouldn’t be arriving till 9pm. Since it was only 3pm at the time, I went for a walk, first around the campus, and then about 4 miles north to the river.
The architecture in Harbin is quite peculiar, a mix of Russian-influenced buildings from the late 19th and early 20th centuries and typical modern Chinese buildings piled acceptingly next to each other. What’s more, especially near GongDa, many of the older buildings seem quite dilapidated, a combination of lack of maintenance and one brutal winter after another pounding against their exteriors. Still, this aged look gives the buildings, and the city, character. (I’ll take some photos when I get a chance.)
We began classes last Monday after taking a language pledge. The language pledge here seems fairly strict: the first time you speak English, you get a written warning; the second time, they write a letter to your home institution (in our case, since the 5 of us are all Fulbrighters, Fulbright and the US State Department); and, the third time, they kick you out. Since a US government CLEA grant is paying for me to be here on the condition that I successfully complete the program, getting kicked out would mean paying back a lot of money to the government. So, I’ll do my best to stick to the language pledge.
Since there are only 5 of us, the classes are very small (my largest class has three students). I have a Composition class, an Advanced Conversation class, a 2-on-1 class with one classmate and a teacher to fix my pronunciation, and a 1-on-1 class focused on preparing me for my Fulbright linguistic research. For my 1-on-1 class, they hired a local linguistics professor from a nearby university to come twice a week for two hours at a time to teach me linguistics terminology in Chinese and to get me to a point where I am able to discuss my research and linguistics in Chinese in an academic setting. While I enjoy most of these classes, the workload is very intensive. We have an essay due every Composition class, and an oral presentation every Conversation class, as well as a lot of vocabulary and reading for every class. On the plus side, I can’t imagine that my Chinese won’t improve.
My dorm room is fairly small and apparently, since I have a 64-bit operating system, I can’t connect to the Internet here. But, my roommate is very nice and goes out of his way to help me, and I’m working on figuring out my Internet problems. (For now, I’ve been going to a local café to shang wang, as they say in Chinese—that’s a long ‘a’, as in kong, by the way, before you start laughing.)
The weekend couldn’t have come sooner. I had 8 hours of class on Friday, and spent the three hours in between studying for the quizzes in the next classes. After day upon day of passing rainstorms, it was also nice to finally get some sunshine. We tried to go see Harry Potter this evening, but they didn’t have an English showing tonight. So, we’re going to try again tomorrow, in between studying for the test that I have on Monday and the reading that I have to do for my 1-on-1 class. I’ll write another post when I get the chance, but I’m sure I’ll be busy. Check back at some point for photos!
